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CIMeC PhD Colloquium Series
The CIMeC Colloquia Series is an annual set of invited talks given by leading researchers in the mind/brain sciences, both from Italy and abroad, aimed principally at our PhD Students. Given the multi-disciplinary backgrounds of the CIMeC students and researchers, the Colloquia are aimed at a general scientific level rather than at a more specialized audience. Colloquia usually take place on the first Thursday of every other month.
Speaker: Floris de Lange (Donders Institute)
Title: Predictive computations in the human brain
Abstract: The brain is fundamentally a predictive organ that uses internal models to extrapolate future events from current inputs. In my talk, I will touch upon the why, what and how of predictive processing. Using recent AI models both as a tool and a model, in combination with human neuroimaging (fMRI and MEG), I will argue that our brain forms high-level predictions about latent causes in the world, and uses these predictions to disambiguate sensory input.
The Colloquium Committee this year is made up by the following PhD students: Valerio Rubino, Greta Gaimarri, Yadunandan Edayadathodi, Luca Betteto, Ilaria Mirlisenna and Michele Acconcia.
Academic Councilor: Dr. Moritz Wurm
2024-2025 academic year Colloquium speakers
Marta Zlatic, Ph.D., Programme Leader, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, Director of Research, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge - Rethinking Discourse Processing in the Era of Large Language Models - November 7, 2024
Christopher Summerfield, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental Psychology, Oxford University; Fellow by Special Election, Wadham College; Research Director, UK AI Safety Institute - Using neural networks to understand human learning - February 6, 2025
Stephanie J. Forkel, PI/Professor @ Donders Institute, Radboud University - Clinical Neuroanatomy of the extended language network - April 17, 2025
Barbara Tversky, Professor Emerita @Stanford University/Columbia Teachers College - Mind in Motion - May 7, 2025 Evelina Fedorenko, Associate Professor @MIT - Language and thought in humans and machines - October 17, 2025
Evelina Fedorenko, Associate Professor @MIT - Language and thought in humans and machines - October 17, 2025
2023-2024 academic year Colloquium speakers
Karl J. Friston Scientific Director: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, UCL The Physics of Sentience - November 9 Christoph Zrenner Scientist, Neurologist Center for Addiction and Mental Health Temerty Centre for Therapeutic Brain Intervention Personalised therapeutic brain stimulation with closed-loop EEG-synchronized TMS - December 7
Eric-Jan Wagenmakers Professor, University of Amsterdam Robustness Reports: An Initiative to Prevent Model Myopia by Consilience of Inductions - February 1
Michael S. Graziano Professor, Princeton University A Conceptual Framework for Consciousness - April 4
Dani S. Bassett Professor, J. Peter Skirkanich Professor, University of Pennsylvania Quantifying Economy in Brain Networks - April 11
Mor Geva, Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer), Tel Aviv University and a Visiting Researcher at Google Research - Knowledge Dependencies in Large Language Models - May 2
Lars Chittka, Professor in Sensory and Behavioural Ecology, Queen Mary University of London - Social insects - ancient civilizations? - June 6
Ellie Pavlick, Associate Professor - Brown University, Research Scientist - Google DeepMind Characterizing Cognitive Mechanisms in Large Language Models - July 4
Edoardo M. Ponti, Assistant Professor - University of Edinburgh - Efficiency as an Inductive Bias: Towards Tokenizer-free and Dynamically Sparse Language Models - September 5
Jessy Li, Associate Professor, Linguistics Department @ University of Texas - Austin - Rethinking Discourse Processing in the Era of Large Language Models - October 3
